Yes there's legit ways of making extra money or even a full time living wage income online.
You just have to do research on the companies that you plan to signup for.
There's some legit paid to write companies and jobs out their if you look for them hard enough look for reviews on them.
Not always but usually if you have to pay a high fee to get started for the online company then it might be a scam company.
Most legit companies won't require you to pay an upfront fee to get started writing or working for them.
You can make money writing content for yourself on hubpages, doing freelance work on freelancer by writing content for other peoples blogs, making logos, working on their websites and much more.
Or you can create your own website or blog on a topic you're passionate and know a lot about.
Making money through a blog or website won't happen overnight though and it could be a year or more before you start seeing some money and in the beginning it might only be a few dollars a month.
But if you think of your blog or website as an internship where you work for free for awhile then eventually all that hard work in the beginning will pay off for years and years to come and if you have enough content and website traffic then the money eventually will start rolling in through affiliate programs, Ebooks if you sell E books and even advertising such as Google Adsense, Media.net or other Adsense alternatives.